


The Madman's Ghosts

by Kitkat3011



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Human, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Christmas, Christmas Fluff, F/M, Flirting, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Grief/Mourning, One Shot, Pining, Portraits, Snow, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:27:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28303062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kitkat3011/pseuds/Kitkat3011
Summary: Widowed John Smith moves to a Victorian House in the Scottish Highlands to escape his grief, however, he finds himself becoming more and more invested in the ghost that comes for Christmas
Relationships: Amy Pond/Rory Williams, Eleventh Doctor/Clara Oswin Oswald, Eleventh Doctor/River Song (past), Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	The Madman's Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> Yes it's not Blue Bloods (I am so so sorry)  
> But I really wanted to do a Christmassy one shot and Blue Bloods is set in January so this was made.  
> Not sure why it was made but I get Dorian Gray vibes and I can't explain why.
> 
> I really hope you like it and can I class it as Christmas present from me to you?

grief

noun  
noun: grief  
1\. intense sorrow, especially caused by someone's death  
"he was overcome with grief”

Grief is not a word particularly associated with Christmas time. In fact, grief and Christmas rarely find time to meet in their busy schedules. The solemn darkness that casts its icy hand through the heart of its victims rarely makes the trip to the one day a year when humanity is at its best, and yet despite this parallel existence it’s almost inarguable that Christmas is the most harrowing time for grief. 

The deep winter shrouded in ice and cold so typically guarded against by family ties and holiday spirit is at its worst when that family is in a period of mourning. The very definition of grief is in the intensity of the sorrow it creates, almost unrelenting in the pain it inflicts. 

This is one of the very rare and entirely unfortunate times when Christmas had the most unpleasant luck of meeting grief. 

I’d like to be able to say this was a tale where an old miser finds joy through family and love and recants his love of money. I’d like to able to say this was a classic Christmas romcom where boy meets girl and only a slightly unfortunate event healed by Christmas magic intervenes. Most of all I’d like to say that for the most part the story was happy, but stories rarely are, are they? 

The period before was happy, it usually is to warrant telling the story in the first place. A happy if boring before, a miserable beginning, a conflicting middle and hopefully a happy and boring ending once more- those are the ingredients needed.  
So, let’s start with before, set the scene in the most basic manner if you will. 

\----------------------------

John Smith, a surgeon with a bright future, married River Song on December 1st in the middle of a freak snowstorm. Despite the snow causing River’s curly hair to almost deflate and John insisting on changing into his hideous blizzard bow tie, the wedding day was considered by both to be the greatest day of their lives. Even if the firework show had to be cancelled.

John spent two years of blissful happiness with his wife and two best friends, celebrating in every snowfall as if it was their wedding day again. The snow fell when they viewed their new home in the highlands of Scotland, a great stone Victorian mansion called Torchwood House. 

Snow had become something associated with joy to John. Something that represented new beginnings and hot chocolate to come. It had lulled him into a false sense of security, so that when River left that late Friday night with Amy and Rory in tow, the snow sleeting down in the darkness, he had expected them to make it to his new home.  
He hadn’t expected the car to veer off the road, for the ice to make the tires spin no matter how hard River attempted to control it. He hadn’t expected them to die one at a time: Amy on impact, River on the way to the hospital and Rory two days later when they finally confirmed his bright, ginger wife’s death. John often thought Rory would have lived had it not been for Amy’s death. It was a special kind of torture to know that your best friend could die to be with their soulmate, and you weren’t given the same release. 

They’d been taking the last of the boxes to the new home. The ancient house that seemingly matched John in every way but years now. They were going to fix it up. Make it bright and fill it with love.  
John wanted to leave it to rot as he was allowing himself to.

When he finally arrived in the Scottish village of Braemar at the urgence of his boss Dr Vastra, he would be more than happy to sit amongst the cardboard boxes and cutting wind. It’s what he deserved after all for taking that extra shift when he should have been in the car, he had no guarantee of death but being with her would have made the pain easier- at least that’s what he told himself.

You see when I said this was not the story of a miser learning the true meaning of Christmas, I meant to say it was in fact the opposite. It is about a good man, who loved whole heartedly, being betrayed by something he greatly valued and slowly descending into something unrecognisably lonely. 

At this point in time you may be thinking why am I reading this miserable story of death and depression and grief at Christmas?  
Well the only answers I can provide at this current time are two possibilities:  
1\. You have a fascination with causing pain to yourself and you want to see if this poisoning of a beloved holiday will do the trick.  
2\. Clara. Halfway out of the dark- wise words in my opinion.

So, the story set, the slightly condescending remarks about self-inflicted misery out of the way and a possible shining light in the darkness presented, let me tell you the aforementioned miserable beginning. 

\----------------------------

John parked the car outside of the grey stone manor, breathed a heavy sigh and slammed his head into the top of the wheel. He’d driven for nine straight hours from London to Braemar for a house that would forever feel incomplete. In all honesty he felt a little ridiculous.  
He’d packed up what was left of his things and said goodbye to his old life, well, what was left of it.

Vastra had said it would be good for him. To leave the flat that River haunted, to try a small GP’s office in comparison to the daily cycle of death at his old hospital. It sounded reasonable; it was reasonable. That didn’t change John’s grudging nature about it all. If he had his way, he wouldn’t be in either place, but Dr Moon had encouraged him to have a different outlook on that particular matter. 

He had spoken to a caretaker on the phone who lived in a cottage with his wife somewhere in the surrounding village. He’d sounded happy through the phone and John instantly disliked him for it. Apparently, his wife, lily or Rose or some kind of flower, had prepared dinner for him and the fires were lit upon arrival. John neither cared nor wanted to care about whatever preparations the simperingly happy couple had made. 

Getting out of the car, he made his way to the oak door with bags in hand not bothering to admire the view of the highlands. The bitter chill in the air hinted to snow and he wondered if it had been gracious enough to fall earlier would he have even been here now.

The house was as drab as expected. It had been when he and River first went to see it. That’s why she had loved it, she had ran around every archway and down every hallway when the estate agent was outside pointing out everything she would tweak to make it bright and he had just laughed along trusting in her vision, because if she loved it so did he.  
It would stay drab now surely, he wasn’t trusted with interior design, his fashion sense was enough reasoning to go by. Instead the house would fall into disrepair to reflect its owner, that’s the promise he made to himself and John Smith always kept his promises.

“Hello there, I’m James McCrimmon, the caretaker.” A friendly, if skinny man popped out of a door on John’s left with a smile on his face. John wanted to wipe it off.  
“I’ve got your fires going in the main rooms, it gets a bit nippy, so you’ll thank me later, and as I was saying on the phone my wife Rose has made you a stew it’s in the kitchen so just help yourself.” The man spoke a mile a minute much like John used to and he thought that if it was him and River here together as it was meant to be, they might have been friends.

John nodded as a reply trailing through the house as the man continued to babble about his wife and his daughter and the history of the house-

“It’s rumoured to be haunted you know; hope you aren’t afraid of no ghost.” The man laughed to himself perhaps out of genuine laugher or perhaps to fill the awkwardness that followed John like a storm cloud since the accident.

“What’s this?” John finally spoke a biting sentence, his hand gesturing to the corner of the living room.

“Well, it’s a Christmas tree I would have thought you had them in London.” The man chuckled to himself again.

“What I mean is, why is it up?” 

“Because it’s December that’s typically what you do in December.” The man seemed to be haltering with his laughter now.

“Not in here it’s not. Take it down.” John swept past the man to fetch his bags and was instead greeted with the sentence he had begun to dread:

“I am very sorry, Mr Smith… about your wife, it was a terrible shame.” John hung his head for a moment and when he turned around to scream or bawl or cry the man was gone and the December chill from the briefly opened front door greeted his stormy face instead.

\----------------------------------------------

The wife, Rose her name was, had shown up a few times throughout the first week bringing food and an annoyingly loud, blonde girl named Jenny with her. The girl had asked why he had no Christmas tree and was quickly hushed by her mother who had wary but sympathetic brown eyes. John appreciated Mrs McCrimmon’s tact.

He had spent the first week throwing away anything of River’s that was particularly painful. He’d been lucky to avoid that in the initial devastation since all of their things had been transported here. Now it was bittersweet, he couldn’t decide whether the wait was beneficial or made everything worse.  
The pictures of them all, River, Amy, Rory and John stayed tucked away in a box for now. He couldn’t bring himself to throw them away, but he didn’t want to have to look at them constantly. 

On December 16th he settled in with a morbid book to match his mood and allowed the dying fire to be the only remnants of warmth left in the aging house.

That’s when he saw the movement. 

A flash and it was gone.

He snapped the book shut and folded his round glasses into his top pocket.

“Hello?” He was only greeted by his own icy breath. 

He shook his head convinced that everyone was right, and he was actually going mad. Were mad people mad if they knew they were mad?  
As he flopped back into his high back armchair, he turned to the matching seat beside him and wondered why he bothered to put it out if it would never be filled.

Surprisingly enough, it was in fact filled.

“AHH!” John leapt back, falling off his chair and crawled into the corner the Christmas tree once occupied. 

“Hello.” A small brunette woman in full Victorian dress sat there in River’s chair as if it was made for her.

“Who the bloody hell are you?” John wasn’t sure why he was speaking to the intruder.

“I’m Clara Oswald, I assume you’re the new owner?” Her voice seemed to lilt between English cockney like Rose and a posh accent that seemed a little forced.

“Yes, well I think that’s rather obvious, what’s not obvious is what you’re doing in my house,” John seemed to be having his first real conversation in months and he wasn’t about to break his sorrowful streak. “But frankly I don’t care just get out.” John really should be angrier about this shouldn’t he? Currently he was just mildly irritated. 

“Ah slight problem with that. I can’t leave.” 

“Oh, I think you can,” at that John stood up and grasped her arm with his hand. Well he tried. His hand went straight through as if her whole body was composed of super dense water vapour.  
At this he screamed again and fled back to his corner. 

“There we go, just sayin it took the previous owner a little longer so you should be proud of yourself.” 

“Previous owner?”

“Yeah nice old Scottish guy, bit grumpy but he always read me ‘A Christmas Carol’ on Christmas Eve.” 

The woman shifted in her chair- River’s chair- her dark blue skirts rustling with her. She was pretty. She had big, brown, doe eyes and a nose that tilted like a ski slope. Her hair was done up rather intricately and John thought it looked like a quite a pain. John isn’t quite sure why that’s where is thoughts instantly went, the same way he wasn’t entirely sure why his first question was about the previous owner. Perhaps it’s the little things like the way her lips curve or whether the previous owner could read that helps us deal with the gigantic things like having a conversation with a ghost.

“You’re a- you’re a-“

“Blimey, I thought we’d moved passed this bit already. I can spell it out if you’d like? G-H-O”

“No thank you I’ve got it.” John snapped, pulling himself up off the floor and back into the safety of his chair.

“Well it seems like I’m at a bit of a disadvantage here.”

“Excuse me?” John looked at this incredulous woman who despite not having living status decided to command him around anyway.

“Well you know my name, but I don’t know yours.” She smiled at him then and John actually found a genuine non-pitiful smile brightening for the first time in months.

“John Smith.”

“Wow didn’t your parents have a sense of humour.”

“I suppose you could say that,” John chuckled, and Clara seemed to straighten in her chair as if she was proud of herself for drawing a laugh out of him. 

Silence settled over the room. Clara expected this; it usually happened with every new owner that managed to survive the initial communication.  
John’s mind, however, was anything but silent. It whizzed and whirred with a hundred and one possible scenarios ranging from temporary insanity to actual insanity all the way back to an actual haunting.

He finally released a mangled “Why?” the initial shock, that inspired actual conversation, evaporated and replaced with paralysing idiocy. 

“Gonna have to give me a little bit more there mate.”

“Why are you here?” He looked up at her then. Properly. He wondered why she looked so solid for someone that wasn’t there.

“Wild theory but, I suppose it’s because I’m dead.” He gave her a pointed glare. “Alright alright sarcasm isn’t for you. I had the real unfortunate luck of dying on Christmas when I was the governess here, now every Christmas time for eternity I get to live in someone else’s house.”

“So, it’s just for Christmas?”

“Yes,” she almost rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry you don’t have a permanent lodger. Although I’d like to add, you are taking this remarkably well.”

“Thanks that’s really great, an evaluation from a ghost.” John wondered not for the first time if he closed his eyes would she disappear. No such luck. “So, what’s the next part? Going to take me on a trip down memory lane to work out why I hate Christmas?”

“Funnily enough no, I’m not here to spend my afterlife catering to you.” At this point Clara looked around the room properly for the first time in a year. “It is Christmas though isn’t it? Cause usually I am on a strict December schedule, but I see we are lacking in the usual festive décor?”

“Did you miss the part where I said I hate Christmas?”

“Blimey you really know how to sulk don’t you?” 

“I am not sulking.” He most definitely was.

“Whatever you say chin boy.”  
“Oi my chin is not that big!” He rubbed at his face, muttering curses under his breath. He tried not to let his spirit, or his ego rise when she clapped her hands and threw her head back laughing.

“Careful dear you could poke someone’s eye out.”

John wasn’t entirely sure why he engaged with the supernatural creature that was probably a figment of his lonely mind, but even if she wasn’t real maybe it was a sign that somebody should be. For some reason this strange woman who was undeniably dead or imaginary was the first person who had truly made him laugh since the accident. 

He ended up talking to her for most of the night, if she was going to disappear once he went to bed, he wanted to make the most of it. When he finally left, he thanked her and wasn’t sure why. 

The next morning, he made himself a cup of coffee and no food as per usual, despite the gentle nudging’s from the McCrimmon’s, and was more than surprised to find Clara perched on the windowsill of the study.

“I didn’t think you were real.” He couldn’t decide if he was elated that she was or disappointed that he had allowed himself to spend time and be happy with someone who would remember it.

“I told you, no such luck until midnight on Boxing day, and then you have to endure my company the next year and the year after that and the year after that year.” The insufferable babbling of how many years he had to endure continued for quite a while.

Clara did that a lot. Wound him up that is. She would trail after him floating through every door that he shut calling out about putting decorations up and making a Christmas soufflé. He had liked her company when it was temporary but now, she was inescapable. He didn’t like having another woman inserting herself into his life for days on end it felt too much like River and too little like her at the same time.

John wasn’t quite ready to admit he enjoyed the company of the flirtatious nanny. Nor was he ready to admit that he smiled at some of the things she said when he had his back turned.

He read to her like he had promised on Christmas Eve because she was unable to hold the book for herself and, in all honesty, an isolation like his where you couldn’t even do the basic things like that seemed like an even worse fate.  
By the time Christmas Morning arrived John had spent eight days in company and for once a piercing of light shone through his oncoming storm.

Clara was unexpected. She would appear out of nowhere with a smile and a joke and John would have despised her for trying if he didn’t enjoy it so much.

He had begrudgingly bought a doll for Jenny and a bottle of wine for the McCrimmon’s from the local shop in town after Rose had dropped off a gift basket of various chocolates, however, he had found himself not so begrudgingly entering the small bookshop on the corner of the high street and even less unwillingly buying a copy of ‘Little Women’ for Clara.

She had been elated when he presented her with the book. She couldn’t touch it, but it came with the promise of it being read to her rather than a pointless, big, red bow. It was the first present she had received in 128 years. 

John ate a measly dinner. It was his own fault. He had opted out of spending the day with the McCrimmon’s in favour of his very own time constrained ghost and he should have known he wouldn’t cook a real dinner. Despite this pitiful meal that would make Dickens’ balk he found himself having an almost passable Christmas.  
It wasn’t River, but it was enough for now.

“Why are you so unhappy John?” 

It was the first time Clara had ever asked why the lonely, young man kept himself so isolated. Why he refused to put up decorations and why she was the only one attending this small Christmas party.

He wanted to shout at her for being so nosey, for daring to intrude. Instead he shut the new book and sighed.

“My wife died, in January along with my two best friends.” Clara looked down at her hands gently placed in her lap. “I haven’t really been up to much Christmas joy lately.”

“I’m so sorry, here I am making jokes and flirting thinking I was making you feel better and all I’ve done is make your grief harder.” 

John sat for a minute wondering how he could make it better. He didn’t stop to consider why he wanted to make it better for her when he was the one suffering.

“So, you admit it then.” Clara’s head shot up. “You were flirting.” Clara started laughing and for the thousandth time that year wished she had the power to shove him. 

“John?” She finally spoke after she stopped laughing.

“Yes Clara?”

“Will you do something for me? Two things actually.”

“Depends.”

“Next year will you put the decorations up?”

John considered it for a moment. He wanted to refuse instantly but then he realised here is a woman who gets ten days a year to barely exist the least he could do was make them happy for her. Ten days a year of unselfishness.

“Yes. I promise.” He said.

“Good.”

“And the other thing?”

“Try and have a good year? Make a friend or find a hobby?”

This one took a little longer to consider but there she was staring at him with those brown eyes that you’d sell your soul for and he couldn’t say no.

“Maybe.”

“That’s better than a ‘no’ Chinny.” 

\------------------------------

John found it was rather lonely after Clara left. He supposed it was just like having a River type around again and losing it again but at least with this woman he had the promise of next year.  
It got worse when the anniversary of his wife and friends’ death arrived.  
A whole year and he was still no better. At least that’s what he told himself.

You see when you’re at the centre of it all and have to live each day, hour, minute and second sometimes you miss the little changes. 

The people around you don’t.

As the months following Clara ticked by more and more people noticed the village Doctor become less surly.  
Rose swears down after every glass of gin that she actually received a smile with teeth much to James’ disbelief.

John didn’t realise that he had kept his small promise of trying when he held the door for old Mrs McLaughlin and her yappy dog. Or when he bought Jenny an Easter egg because he thought she might like one not because it was expected.  
Perhaps it wasn’t the Christmas miracle Clara had anticipated but it was undeniable she had had a positive effect.

He ensured the decorations were up early that year. He paid James extra to do it for him as he was only doing it for Clara, he didn’t really desire any involvement. When asked why the change of heart John was rather scared to see her face pop into his mind’s eye.  
When she appeared that December, he tried not to appear too happy because he wasn’t too happy. He really totally wasn’t. Just a little bit maybe. 

“Wow you listened to me,” she marvelled at the garlands lining the walls and the tinsel on the tree, “maybe I can get you to throw away those god-awful bow ties next.”

“Bow ties are cool I’ll have you know.” 

“They weren’t even cool in my day mister, you’re just an anomaly.”

“The ghost in my living room is one to talk.” He smirked for a millisecond before he realised what he was doing, instantly straightening.

“Point taken.”

Around the third day into her yearly visit he found his hands to be itching for something, anything, to do.

“Can I paint you?” He blurted.

“I’m sorry?” 

“It’s just I’m not sure if you come up on camera and I think you would be rather fun to paint.” Suddenly he realised what a stupid mistake he had made. 

“You can paint?”

“I’m a surgeon.” He shrugged. When she looked confused, he quickly explained. “Steady hands.”

It was an ideal pair for a portrait. The muse had no requirement for food or water, or sleep and the artist had almost conditioned himself to go without those things that it would take Clara reminding him of his humanness to get him to stop. 

“Sit still.”

“I am!”

“You are so squirming.”

“Artists. So temperamental.” He looked past his easel with a raised eyebrow at her and it took great strength for her not to giggle at the near invisible quality of his eyebrows.

He studied every line and curve of her face. The exact shades of her chestnut hair and the softness of her bottom lip. He told himself it was for accuracy, that he needed the portrait to look right if he wasn’t going to offend her. He chose to ignore the voice inside that warned him that he enjoyed looking.

When it was done, he placed it above the fireplace in the dining room for ‘added class’.

“You’ve made me look…beautiful.” Clara tilted her head admiring his work.

“That’s how I see you.” He stared at her for a second, the realisation of what he said sinking in. “Goodnight Clara.” 

He hastily left the room not bothering to turn back.

He was thankful her ghostly presence accepted his bedroom as one of the few rooms she wasn’t welcome to float through, because as he sat on the edge of his bed that night, he cried for the first time in several months.

He cried for Clara who would never lead a normal life.

He cried for Amy and Rory who had been trying for a baby.

He cried for River who deserved more, so much more and how he felt like he was betraying her and her memory.

Finally, he cried for himself for reasons unknown but deeply painful all the same.

Christmas dinner was actually enjoyable this year as he had asked Rose if she would make him some extra to eat at home and the wonderful woman had said yes. She insisted they were disappointed he wasn’t spending Christmas with them again but as long as he was eating properly, she was more than happy.

He bought Clara another book as was the Christmas tradition and assured her that he didn’t need a present in return and frankly it was quite impossible for her to get him something and to stop worrying when she can’t even leave the house. 

As they sat by the crackling fire in the same position exactly one year later, John wondered if it was his turn to ask a question like Clara had the year before.

“How did you die Clara?”

“I fell, I think.”

“You think?” He didn’t realise something as traumatic as death would be so easily forgotten.

“Well it was quite a long time ago now and in all honesty a bit of a haze to begin with, but I think I was up a height trying to entertain the children, it was frosty. I remember that part. It was just so cold.” 

John shuddered to think how many people the ice had claimed.  
“I must have slipped.” 

“Is everyone like you?” John looked into her eyes, a plea leaping the expanse between them. “Stuck in this limbo?”

“I don’t think so, no. I mean plenty of other people have died here and they don’t come back to haunt you, do they?”

“No-then again they might just be less annoying than you.” She actually rolled her eyes that time. He wondered if they did that in the Victorian times or if it was something she had picked up over her century. 

“Maybe I just have some unfinished business.”

“Maybe.” John sighed his head wheeling with even more questions.

“She’s not like me John.” His eyes snapped to hers once more. “I promise. None of them are waiting for you on the side of the road, I’m just a special case- a special case of what I can’t tell you.”

John wondered if she could know for certain. Of course, she couldn’t.  
Wouldn’t it be preferable to believe they were somewhere better? That they weren’t stuck in this miserable life like Clara?

That New Year he spent every waking moment on the stretch of road they crashed waiting for them to appear.  
When they didn’t, he didn’t know if he was thankful, they had moved on or greeting grief like an old friend again.

Either way, he never mentioned his wasted month of waiting to Clara.

\--------------------------------------

By the time next year rolled around John was positively spritely in comparison to his initial arrival. The GP office he worked at had been decked out for the holidays by his own hands, much like Torchwood house and he had even volunteered to help organise the village food bank drive.

Rose still pestered him about coming for Christmas dinner especially with his improved mood and yet he still resisted. He refused to leave Clara on her own for Christmas.

James insisted that time was clearly the best medicine for grief and with a combination of the upcoming festivities John was undeniably brighter than ever. 

He couldn’t tell them that he still had terrible dark days when he was repulsed by the very happiness, he sometimes indulged in.  
He couldn’t explain how the lift in his mood was due to the arrival of Clara because who would believe him? He’d be checked into the psyche ward.

Instead John ploughed through. He took his time off for the holidays and bought the supplies he needed for his own turkey dinner (he still asked for a piece of Rose’s Christmas pudding- he was trying to be independent not stupid.

Throughout the year he had placed the photographs of him and River and Amy and Rory around the house. Their smiling faces graced his mantle one by one and he found that with each ornate frame the pain was a little less. 

He kept the portrait of Clara separate from River. Something inside him felt wrong to make the two different pictures mingle. 

When Clara appeared John almost wanted to hug her and spin her around. As much as he’d loathe to admit it to her (especially considering how much she can gloat) he had missed her throughout the year. 

These ten days were the highlight of his year.  
He didn’t like to think how pathetic that sounded.

When they settled by the fire that Christmas Eve for the habitual reading John was shocked to find Clara on the floor, leaning her head against the arm of his chair rather than in her usual spot in the other armchair.

He had just grown used to accepting that as her chair rather than River’s. He wasn’t sure how it happened, but he went from preserving it for River to saving it for Clara. Now, here he was with Clara curled up on the floor waiting for him.

He found he didn’t entirely mind and if he focused very hard, he could feel the warmth of her breath on his knee. Logic told him that was wishful thinking.

“Why do you spend Christmas with me?” Clara asked cutting off Scrooge’s dealings with the Ghost of Christmas Present. 

“Because I don’t want to be lonely.” He didn’t look up from the page. 

“That’s not true. You told me how you’ve been getting out and about more and the caretaker that pops round, he invited you to dinner just yesterday.” John much preferred when Clara knew nothing about the state of his life. He wasn’t quite a fan of her being able to counter any point he made.

“Fine. I didn’t want you to be lonely.” She blinked up at him a small ‘o’ forming on her mouth.  
“You get ten days a year. They should be spent in company.”

“But surely you must want to spend your holidays with the living rather than slumming it with the dead?”

“I have plenty of holidays to spend with the living like Easter and New Year and Thanksgiving.” In all honesty he wasn’t entirely sure why he kept coming back to the spirit that haunted this stone house. He may have had a small clue why, but he wasn’t ready to think about that yet.

“We don’t celebrate Thanksgiving.” 

“Well my point still stands. There’s a myriad of holidays to spend with people. I choose to spend this holiday with you.” 

She went quiet, contemplating his response. 

“Thank you.” She whispered after perhaps too much time had passed.

When he went to bed that night, he found for the first time in a long time that the cold of the other side bothered him in a new way. It wasn’t River’s absence that unsettled him in his otherwise cosy bed but something new and complicated that presented problems John had never considered before.

He snapped off his light and tried not to wonder how he had come to care for a woman that wasn’t his wife.

\------------------------------

The fourth anniversary of River’s death was the least painful of them all. He drank a toast to his friends and wife on the night but soon found himself reminiscing rather than mourning. 

He ended up inviting some of the friends he had made in the village up and told stories of his wild wife who had worked as an archaeologist in Egypt and threatened a whole team with an ancient curse trapped inside an urn if they didn’t bring her the equipment she asked for. 

He talked about Rory and how kind and eternally optimistic he was despite his overwhelming lean towards logic. 

He laughed along with the crowd as he showed them photos of Amy’s worst haircut and the follow up picture of his black eye from when he had laughed at it. 

James had asked about Clara then. He had seen her portrait and knew it wasn’t one of the ones already in the property for historical record.

John found himself talking about her for longer than he had discussed the others. He didn’t even realise he was doing it, but he was telling tales of his friend who came for Christmas who had lightning fast wit and made him laugh like he hadn’t in a long time.

“You must really like this girl.” Rose winked from behind her wine glass.

“Oh no. I uh she’s just a friend, she’s too short and bossy and her nose is all funny.” He did some hand gestures he’s not proud of.  
Rose simply raised an eyebrow and John could only gulp in response.

“Well that’s good cause I know this girl she’s wonderful you’d love her, if you aren’t seeing anyone else why don’t I set you up?” James chimed in from the corner where Jenny was dozing on his lap. 

“Oh no I can’t, I’m not ready, not with you know…” He gestured vaguely.

“Ah River of course.” John nodded sharply before going to refill their drinks.

He wasn’t sure who he could talk to about why when the possibility of dating came up it felt like more of a betrayal to Clara.

Christmas with Clara came and went, and it was becoming harder and harder to separate her from reality. When he tried to grab her waist to slow her down when she was running about annoying him or when he wanted to hug her on Christmas morning, it seemed inevitable at these times that he forgot he couldn’t touch her. 

She seemed so real and so present that it was like ice water in the face every time he was given the dose of reality that she was in fact nothing but mist that would disappear at the end of the holiday.  
Sometimes he noticed her pale like a movie on a projector screen, flickering as she went.

It was then he came to the realisation that she was a present to him that was not built to last. The happiness built around her was unsustainable. 

He had written an inscription in the book he got her this year- pride and prejudice- telling her in a way what he was feeling. He hadn’t read it to her. Perhaps he never would. 

He allowed the holiday to slip by with no dramatic confessions and hoped by next year it became easier to cope.

\-------------------------------

By the fifth Christmas, John has truly settled into life in Braemar. He sometimes wished when he was walking in the Highlands that River had been here to see it too. If she had made her mark in the village and convinced them all to adore her as much as he did. Well almost as much.

Instead he accepted his solitude and was almost happy with it. He had gone ahead with the plans for the house that River had babbled about for months before they bought it. He and James had set about doing it up and making it what Rose described as ‘liveable’.

When James had set about choosing colours for the guest bedroom, he was surprised to see that he picked red- Clara’s favourite colour- and even more surprised to see that he set about ensuring the bed was comfy and the armchair he placed was by the fire.  
James had asked if he was expecting guests often which is when John surprised himself the most.

“Only at Christmas.”

This year he had bought Clara a set of audio books he could play for her in the spare bedroom so that when she was alone and floating around the house, she had somewhere to call her own.  
The elation on her face was worth it entirely. 

John wondered if she looked even paler this year. Not in complexion but overall, her physical form. It was as if a body of water had been rippled and it was in the period of resettling: there but not quite there.

He forced his worries about Clara from his head as they settled into their routine for the next ten days.

When Christmas Day rolled around, John was even more concerned about Clara not only had the way she looked changed but the way she sounded had as well. Her voice seemed quieter and yet more echoey at the same time.

“Clara are you ok?” He went to her side at the armchair, kneeling down on the balls of his feet.

“No John I’m dead.” She attempted a laugh but was met with a disapproving stare. “I’m not entirely sure.”

“Is there anything I can do? Anything I can fix?” He was panicked now. He couldn’t lose Clara too.

“I think my time might be running out.”

“Well of course it is it’s nearly midnight.” Clara shook her head softly.

“No John I mean my time of coming for Christmas.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense you aren’t bound by time you’ve been here for a century why leave now? You can’t leave now.” John felt a familiar clawing in his throat. The same clawing that had plagued him when he was told of River’s death.

He knew Clara was dead. He wasn’t silly enough to pretend otherwise, however, that was what had made her so perfect: she was already gone so he couldn’t lose her.

“Remember when I said that I wasn’t here to cater to you?” John nodded his mouth dry. “Well I’m starting to wonder if that statement isn’t true.”

“You can’t mean that you’ve been stuck here all this time waiting for me!” John cried incredulously.

“No no, not you specifically I mean someone like you. When I was falling, I can vividly remember thinking about the children, I just thought again and again ‘good lord let me help them’ because what they saw must have been so traumatic. I never did help them. I thought it may have been too much for them to see me at Christmas, so I stayed out of sight. Maybe in some little way I’ve helped you instead?” Clara looked down as if she didn’t entirely believe what she was saying.

“You have helped me! Clara you have done more for me in the past five years than anyone in the world, no matter how hard they tried! You can’t leave now- please!” John was begging at this point.

“If I have helped you maybe it is my turn to go? I don’t have to repeat Christmas again and again and again.”

“Clara please-“ she was starting to become a little spaced out as if her grasp of reality was shifting.  
All John felt was the hand of grief tightening on his heart once more.

“Hey Chin boy, did I ever tell you that I really actually secretly fancy you?” 

Two minutes to midnight. 

“If I’m being honest, I may have fallen a little bit in love with you, if I’m going, I might as well tell you I didn’t really want to ruin the Christmas dinners before but now…”

“Clara.” 

One minute to midnight.

“I think I might love you too.”

She smiled that soft little smile.

“You’re a clever boy then huh?”

Midnight.

John tried to reach for her. His hands fell through air that was colder than the rest and he felt his heart drop into the pool of ice once more.  
His fist swung at the clock on the mantle, stopping the ticking of the hands at exactly midnight.

He couldn’t know for certain if she would return. She could be wrong because who truly knew the workings of the universe? He didn’t believe in ghosts before her, now, he’ll refuse to believe in ghosts that can’t come back.

He didn’t want to admit that he already knew he wouldn’t see her again.

It was then he truly allowed himself to cry. He wailed like he had in the hospital room when the last of his world had died.

“Have you not finished with me yet?!” He screamed at nothing and everything. “Am I not done? Have you not put me through enough?” He slammed his hands into his chest as he pleaded with whatever higher being was listening.

“I have been through so much! I am done, I am finished there is nothing more you can do to me now!”

John fell to his knees and wept. 

He found it entirely unfair that he was alone again.

Why did he have to fall in love with a ghost of all things? And if he had to fall in love with a Ghost why couldn’t it have been River?

\-------------------------------

It was undeniable that the village doctor was slightly glummer. It wasn’t as noticeable as it was when he first arrived but there was an air about him that was decidedly different. The smile was more forced, the bags under the eyes a little more defined.

Despite this, John clung to hope. He had been unsure from the start whether this was really it for Clara. She was rather dramatic from time to time and maybe just maybe there was a chance she was wrong and would be there, waiting for him, on the 16th.

As he sat and waited for her spirit to appear John fell into deeper and deeper despair that year.  
She wasn’t coming.  
Clara was gone.

He wished he could say he had never felt pain like this before, but he had. This was just fresh and, in the moment, fresh always hurts more than the old. 

He drank then. Any kind of alcohol he could get his hands on. He sat in front of her portrait, swigging and swigging hoping that some kind of alcoholic hallucination would occur, and he would see her once more. 

No such luck.

He spent the next few days in a stupor. It was the loneliest Christmas he had ever had, and he wondered how the period that even in his worst moment had been vaguely better had become so infected with grief.

He lied to the McCrimmon’s and said he was sick, so they avoided his home for a while. He couldn’t face company like this.  
He turned away any and all visitors from the village.  
This isolation was self-inflicted because the only person he wanted who he should be able to have was never coming back.

By Christmas Eve he had drank every bottle of alcohol in the house and it was a miracle he wouldn’t need his stomach pumped.  
He rolled himself into a cold shower, fully clothed and wondered how since the loss of Clara had he fallen down the rabbit hole of his worst coping mechanisms. He hoped somewhere in the back of his mind he had improved for himself rather than her and yet here he was the minute she was gone wallowing. 

If he thought about it for a minute more, he would have seen that he had improved, and this was just another bout of grief he had to work through to become well again. John was never one to think things through. Instead he invested in self-blame and self-punishment.

By the time he crawled into bed, still soaked through his tweed jacket, his voice was hoarse from crying their names.

\------------------------------  
On Christmas Morning John was aware of a faint irate buzzing ringing throughout the house. He groaned and rolled further into bed unwilling to stop it and yet desperately willing its end.  
Eventually he dragged himself to the source of the noise. His clothes still clung to him slightly, his usually floppy hair shot off in every direction and his face perfectly mirrored the pounding hangover inside his head.

He ripped the oak door open and growled: “What?”

At the sight of what was in front of him he felt blindingly sober.

Her hair was shorter, shoulder length but down and perfectly sleek, yet it was the same colour.  
Her lips weren’t painted red, but he would recognise the curve anywhere.  
Her clothes were modern and tight fitted although he knew who she was.

He had seen a ghost. A ghost of a ghost.

“Clara?” He wondered if he had driven himself to madness, it seemed like something he’d do.

“No? I’m Oswin, Oswin Oswald I was just coming to ask you about an ancestor of mine, a great great great aunt or something?” She had a stack of papers in her hand and a cup of coffee in the other.  
The resemblance was uncanny.  
“Is this a bad time? I can come back later; I should have known you would have been busy on Christmas.” She was more flustered than Clara ever was, and John heard a voice in his head you can’t just replace her with a copy.

“Yeah sorry massive hangover, if you want to talk at a later date that’s…fine, yeah that’s fine.” 

“Oh, ok.” She sounded disappointed. John hated hearing her sound disappointed even if it was without that cockney twang. “I’m staying at the inn if you wanted to get in touch.”

He moved to shut the door wondering why the universe wasn’t done tormenting him with women who were there but not quite there.

River was here in full and ripped away from him.

Clara was here in spirit but never in full.

Now, here was Oswin, an echo of Clara, full but not in the way he needed.

He knew it was ridiculous to hold her to the same standard as Clara which is why he let her walk away. He hit his head on the door, gripping the handle like a vice to stop himself tearing after her, because it wasn’t her.

As her boots crunched into the gravel, he heard it. A familiar voice of cockney mixed with posh and a lilt of Scottish developed over the century:

“Run you Clever Boy and remember me.”

It was as if Clara knew. As if she wanted him to chase after Oswin. After all these years of Christmases, she had given him a gift back.

Before he knew what he was doing he had ripped the door open again and was sprinting after her, his arms waving as he shouted “wait!”.

He stopped in front of her, panting, and smiled a beaming smile down the distance between his height and her tiny stature.  
“Hello.”

“Hi,” she laughed as she took in the state of him, bedraggled and grinning, “Change of heart on the whole ancestral quest?”

“Uh yes, I’m assuming you’re related to Clara Oswald?” He ran a hand through his hair nervously.

“Wow are you a mind reader or psychic?”

“No, it’s just you are the spitting image of her.” At her confused look John quickly realised his mistake. “there’s a portrait of her, in the house that is, I always thought she was very pretty.” Oswin blushed and smiled the same smile Clara had given him when he painted the portrait.

“Well it seems like I’m at a bit of a disadvantage here, considering you know my name, but I don’t know yours.”

“Uh Smith, John Smith.” John’s eyes widened, his first meeting with Clara playing back to him.

She laughed.

Snow began to fall fleetingly and John wondered for second if this was another cruel trick like his wedding day or if maybe, just maybe it was a sign that perhaps he was right where he was meant to be.

“Your parents had a great sense of humour.” This time John laughed, the universe wasn’t so unfair after all.

“I suppose you could say that.” He echoed back, the promise of Christmases to come waiting in this Miss Oswald’s hands.

\------------------------------

At the beginning of the story I suggested it was a sad tale, which it is in a way. But as most stories go there is usually an ending of possibility.  
At the time I said I wished this story was about a miser learning the meaning of Christmas, but that’s not true.  
From what I have come to understand, it is far better to have the good man who lost his way, through no fault of his own, be granted that happiness rather than the selfish who fear death.

While Christmas had the most unfortunate time of meeting grief who revels in the more painful aspects of this story and of life, it is also rather fortunate that in the form of Clara and Oswin and John Christmas should also meet hope.

hope

noun  
noun: hope; plural noun: hopes

1.grounds for believing that something good may happen.  
"he does see some hope for the future"

**Author's Note:**

> Ok let's play spot the reference, cause there's a handful  
> I'm not entirely sure whether I like the way it starts and ends because I tried a new style so let me know.  
> I'm also not sure if I portrayed the grief as well as I would have liked or really established the relationships as much as I would have liked but either way it's done so let me know!
> 
> Leave kudos or a comment if you liked it and a comment if you hated it (maybe you can leave the kudos anyway out of Christmas spirit)


End file.
